Defining Private Property

[Traitorfish]

Hence my original point: private property comes out of peoples' desire not to have a war and shoot each other.

How do you reconcile that claim with the facts that, on the one hand, most human societies did not have private, yet also managed not to drown themselves in their own blood, and that, on the other, the emergence of private property was in most of the world a violent imposition upon the majority by the ruling class?

In my view, private property is in is essence a "protection" for people, originally developed to protect your own work, and avoid conflicts.

I assume everybody would agree on the basic function of private property as a legal framework aimed at the protection of the assets you built for yourself.
Imagine you work a piece of land, make it productive, build irrigation, barn, house etc.
You need "something" to ensure that nobody will come and take it away from you.
Private property is that "something"; a legal framework accepted and upheld by everybody that ensure your protection.
In such legal framework, violence is not arbitrary but reserved only as a protection against those who want to steal the fruit of your hard work.

Clearly things are not so clear cut today but that's the original motivation and justification for private property.

Without meaning to sound like a broken record, I have to ask: if this is the case, then how is it that, on the one hand, most humans for most of history managed to survive without private property, and, on the other, that the introduction of private property historically involved a series of arbitrary land-seizures?

 

[ParkCungHee]

So the point remains, if Traitorfish's computer broke, he would have no incentive not to steal yours. An agreement based on mutual convenience can't be binding, because one party has no reason to stick to it once it's inconvenient.

Imagine you work a piece of land, make it productive, build irrigation, barn, house etc.
You need "something" to ensure that nobody will come and take it away from you.

And this sounds less like a call for private property than seizing the means of production.

 

[wolfigor]

Without meaning to sound like a broken record, I have to ask: if this is the case, then how is it that, on the one hand, most humans for most of history managed to survive without private property, and, on the other, that the introduction of private property historically involved a series of arbitrary land-seizures?

That doesn't change the original "motivation" behind the "invention" of private property.

Your link about enclosures covers a very specific case that has limited relevance to what I wrote because it covers common land held in the open field system and used for grazing.
There is nothing about what was built (barn, house, etc.): if one person build that himself, do anybody has the right to take those properties away on whim?

More to the point your link deals about illegal land-grab, where public land becomes private without any fair compensation for the community.
That's an abuse of the private property system, not the normality.
Land could be commonly owned but the rented out by the state (or community) to privates for a limited (however long) time.


Lets make a more clear example that does not involve land: you build your on bicycle, can we consider it private or anybody has the right to take it away from you?

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Leftists in general may not like private property, but they put up with it (reluctantly) because they don't want to start a civil war and kill people to change the system to what they want.

Christ in a cookie-jar. What a load of bollocks.

 

[Traitorfish]

That doesn't change the original "motivation" behind the "invention" of private property.

Your link about enclosures covers a very specific case that has limited relevance to what I wrote because it covers common land held in the open field system and used for grazing.
There is nothing about what was built (barn, house, etc.): if one person build that himself, do anybody has the right to take those properties away on whim?

Do you know any country in which private property works that way? In which it is impossible to own land (which can't be made) or information (which can't be taken)? In which all are commercial exchanges strictly managed in accords to a just price theory of value? In which it is illegal to take from somebody that which they have built- say, to repossess land on which they have built a house? Again, this is ideology, not a description of how the world works or has ever worked. At best, it's a description of how you think the world should work, but that would (should?) make you every bit the frustrated radical I am, with no interested at all in defending the status quo.

More to the point your link deals about illegal land-grab, where public land becomes private without any fair compensation for the community.
That's an abuse of the private property system, not the normality.
Land could be commonly owned but the rented out by the state (or community) to privates for a limited (however long) time.

These weren't illegal land grabs, and the land, according to the law, wasn't public. Everything was quite within the letter of the law, the legal owner of the land disposing of his land as he saw fit. Only in a pre-private system of land-distribution could the peasantry claim any sort of claim on "common" land, or indeed to the land in which they farmed (and would in time find themselves stripped of), and you evidently regard the very idea of such a system as irrational at best. So why would you have any problem with it?

[Edit: Also, it occurs that by discussing the enclosures only as the seizure of common grazing land, you're missing the fact that the process extended to tilled land- it's simply that, in tilled land, access wasn't outrighted denied, but reconstructed on a private rather than communal basis (or, more accurately, semi-communal, because the manorial lord possessed certain rights to mediate between tenants, as opposed to a true communal system in which his relationship is to the commune as a whole). Previously, the land would be divided into parcels, and each parcel attributed to a household, but these were not permanent forms of ownership, and the land was generally re-attributed on an annual basis as part of the system of crop-rotation. Only with enclosure were the fields broken down into individual, permanent tenancies. Although this didn't provoke the same reaction that the seizure of common land did, because the practical effects were limited, it did provide the basis for the later expropriation of the peasantry, because in the process of reorganisation they were robbed of their traditional rights to the land, become instead private tenants, equivalent to somebody renting a shop-front in a town.)

Lets make a more clear example that does not involve land: you build your on bicycle, can we consider it private or anybody has the right to take it away from you?

I do not understand why you think it must be one or the other?

 

[Cutlass]

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Leftists in general may not like private property, but they put up with it (reluctantly) because they don't want to start a civil war and kill people to change the system to what they want.

That's an odd thing to say. Republicans and most libertarians in the US have an extremely weak support of private property. Nullifying private property rights is actually a central plank of the Republican platform. While nullifying the defense of private property is a central plank of the libertarian platform.

 

[BasketCase]

How do you reconcile that claim with the facts that, on the one hand, most human societies did not have private, yet also managed not to drown themselves in their own blood

Because past human societies usually DID have private property (most often private for the king) and DID manage to drown themselves in blood (not necessarily their own--usually it was someone else's).

and that, on the other, the emergence of private property was in most of the world a violent imposition upon the majority by the ruling class?

It wasn't. Those opposed to private property were (in the past, and are today) the exception.

Without meaning to sound like a broken record, I have to ask: if this is the case, then how is it that, on the one hand, most humans for most of history managed to survive without private property

They didn't. For most of history, humans (as well as all other animals) held onto property using the fist and the spear. The physically strong (or those skilled with a blade) got all the land, and skinny weak guys like us ended up dead. Today's private property system is a vast improvement.

So the point remains, if Traitorfish's computer broke, he would have no incentive not to steal yours.

Yes he would. If there were no laws, a potential thief (how bout we make this non-personal?) would need to fear my friends Smith and Wesson. Since we have laws, a potential thief instead fears arrest by a cop, which I consider a vastly better system.

That's an odd thing to say. Republicans and most libertarians in the US have an extremely weak support of private property.

Weak support is still support. And the support of private property by Republicans and Libertarians can only be considered "weak" because most of them are not willing to shoot trespassers.

The weakest support of private property (or the complete lack of support for it) comes from the political LEFT.

 

[Traitorfish]

Because past human societies usually DID have private property (most often private for the king)...

That isn't what "private property" means.




The rest is a bit pointless if you can't even get that right.

 

[Ayatollah So]

So, the title of the thread is "defining private property" -
So instead of just asserting that private property does mean this, or doesn't mean that -
How about explaining/defining/etc? Ideally in such a way as to give readers some reason to accept the definition or explanation.

 

[Traitorfish]

Well, the thread title is a bit misleading, because it was always about explaining private property, rather than defining it. Insofar as any particular definition is needed, its to clarify the distinction between private and non-private forms, suffice to say that manorial and communal property-forms, representing a far more multi-dimensional bundle of property claims than the essentially individual and absolute claims associated with private property, do not qualify.

Just because you can construct a sentence that appears to suggest that allodial ownership in a feudal system is sort of like private property in land doesn't mean that it actually is.

 

[BasketCase]

From the start, T-Fish, people in this thread have been disagreeing on what "private property" actually is. So, no. I say private property is as I defined it earlier. In the past, private property was indeed obtained by force. Today, in the Free World, it's an (almost) entirely voluntary agreement by people who don't want to have a shooting war over said property.

 

[Traitorfish]

Yes, but in your framework a tenured professorship is "private property". You're just wrong about this.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Yes he would. If there were no laws, a potential thief (how bout we make this non-personal?) would need to fear my friends Smith and Wesson. Since we have laws, a potential thief instead fears arrest by a cop, which I consider a vastly better system.

Again, these are all contingent reasons why it is useful to me to obey the rules regarding private property. This still provides no reason why I should obey these rules if I can by power or cunning make property my own. Considering the fact that many people quite successfully get property this way, this seems like a very weak defense of private property: "You should respect an individuals property rights when it's convenient for you."

 

[BasketCase]

Yes, but in your framework a tenured professorship is "private property".

Wrong. In my framework, private property is land that only one person or a small group controls.

Again, these are all contingent reasons why it is useful to me to obey the rules regarding private property. This still provides no reason why I should obey these rules if I can by power or cunning make property my own.

Doesn't matter why. Obviously it works most of the time.

Considering the fact that many people quite successfully get property this way, this seems like a very weak defense of private property: "You should respect an individuals property rights when it's convenient for you."

You missed the point. There are two different ways to have private property: either by force, or by mutual agreement (such as capitalism). The core of my argument in this thread has been that the second method is a vast improvement over the first.

 

[Traitorfish]

Wrong. In my framework, private property is land that only one person or a small group controls.

That's the problem, though: it's not until the emergence of private-property forms that it becomes possible to identify these absolute disposal-claims. Property, and above all land, was subject to often complex s. A single manorial estate could have a number of aristocrats of varied station each claiming with equal validity to "control" it, while the resident peasantry themselves were also possessed of certain tenure-rights that went beyond those of a private tenant.

(A surviving example of this is, as I suggested, in academic tenure, in which a professor retains certain limited rights of "control" over the university, as an institution if not a physical space, that are not explained as a form of private ownership.)

You missed the point. There are two different ways to have private property: either by force, or by mutual agreement (such as capitalism). The core of my argument in this thread has been that the second method is a vast improvement over the first.

If capitalism is property-through-consensus, then why do we have absolute and unilateral property-claims and a violent state tasked with enforcing them?

 

[BasketCase]

That's the problem, though: it's not until the emergence of private-property forms that it becomes possible to identify these absolute disposal-claims.

Completely irrelevant. In the absence of the above, private property is still possible--through the use of the sword and the fist.

Property, and above all land, was subject to often complex s. A single manorial estate could have a number of aristocrats of varied station each claiming with equal validity to "control" it, while the resident peasantry themselves were also possessed of certain tenure-rights that went beyond those of a private tenant.

You're missing my point. The above system is an improvement over the system that existed before it, because the participants aren't trying to shoot/stab each other.

If capitalism is property-through-consensus, then why do we have absolute and unilateral property-claims and a violent state tasked with enforcing them?

We don't. Most capitalist economies are decidedly NON-violent. In fact, here in the United States, most police officers go their entire careers without firing their guns anywhere but the rifle range. A taser is about as violent as they get. Whereas in nations that are NOT capitalist (think dictatorships, i.e. command economies), the violence is many times worse.

 

[ParkCungHee]

You missed the point. There are two different ways to have private property: either by force, or by mutual agreement (such as capitalism). The core of my argument in this thread has been that the second method is a vast improvement over the first.

Yeah, for you. Force works pretty good for people who have to the power to force, and has done so historically, and mutual agreement doesn't work to well for a lot of people.

 

[Traitorfish]

Completely irrelevant. In the absence of the above, private property is still possible--through the use of the sword and the fist.

How is it irrelevant when it is the whole and entire point?

You're missing my point. The above system is an improvement over the system that existed before it, because the participants aren't trying to shoot/stab each other.

That isn't what existed before. (Do you know anything about European history?)

We don't. Most capitalist economies are decidedly NON-violent. In fact, here in the United States, most police officers go their entire careers without firing their guns anywhere but the rifle range. A taser is about as violent as they get. Whereas in nations that are NOT capitalist (think dictatorships, i.e. command economies), the violence is many times worse.

That's not really the point. Private property is, as you said, a matter of exclusive control, and that sort of control in practice means the ability to exercise violence or to have others exercise it on your behalf. Whether or not violence is seen in any given moment, it is implicit in the system, functions as the condition for the system itself. That precludes it from being considered a form of voluntary agreement.

 

[cegman]

That isn't what existed before. (Do you know anything about European history?)


That's not really the point. Private property is, as you said, a matter of exclusive control, and that sort of control in practice means the ability to exercise violence or to have others exercise it on your behalf. Whether or not violence is seen in any given moment, it is implicit in the system, functions as the condition for the system itself. That precludes it from being considered a form of voluntary agreement.

Do you? What is a Lord and his Knights but people who took land and held it with their own power. What are Castles you always read about how a castle commanded a valley this was both militarily true and economically.

 

[Gogf]

That's not really the point. Private property is, as you said, a matter of exclusive control, and that sort of control in practice means the ability to exercise violence or to have others exercise it on your behalf. Whether or not violence is seen in any given moment, it is implicit in the system, functions as the condition for the system itself. That precludes it from being considered a form of voluntary agreement.

Yeah, sure, but anybody who has ever spent more than five minutes thinking about philosophy knows that the world can never come close to being based entirely on "voluntary agreement," so this seems like an incredibly silly metric upon which to construct your political theory.